In the grey days of late 1970s
post-punk Manchester, youth culture was a serious affair: every
musical performance was measured mostly by the conviction of its
delivery. The term 'New Wave' opened up free vistas where acquired
skills could once again be exercised after punk's monochrome blur.
It could be applied to anything from a James 'Blood' Ulmer record
to the latest Throbbing Gristle release, Magazine to Swell Maps.
Move outside that terrain into Sun Ra, Parliament, Frank Sinatra
and Martin Denny, and your options were suddenly without limit…

Then came Tony Wilson's Factory
Club (at the Russell Club in Hulme) offering an open invitation
to experiment that was taken up when Ken Hollings, Howard Walmsley,
Eddie Sherwood and a few others decided to make some noise to accompany
their 16mm silent epic Biting Tongues. A further performance followed
a few weeks later, when Colin Seddon and Graham Massey disbanded
their Post Natals project and joined up. The film itself, a flashing
series of negative images, became a memory; the name remained.

Graham Massey: Colin was a
bit of a bass prodigy when I met him at school (star tank top and
Black Sabbath cross). I noticed this when he played Green Sleeves
in the school play but in the style of Stanley Clarke. I was not
so technically proficient on my Kay guitar, but with enough fuzz
and wah I was equally as good (in my mind) as John McLaughlin.
I also had an electric violin which was my prog passport into Colin's
garage band: we did Gong, Magma and Sex Pistols covers in community
centres, smoked a lot of joss sticks in funny time signatures.
So we join this New Wave band of slightly older people. The drummer
plays a hybrid of northern soul and dub, which of course Colin
insists should be in 7/8. The singer, well, he's like a CNN anchorman
on amphetamines, and the sax player is busy fiddling with his Pentax…

Ken Hollings: When Biting
Tongues first started I was in London working with John Cage on
one of his books, completing the final edit on For the Birds for
the publisher Marion Boyars. So I spent a lot of time talking about
how texts could be processed, scrambled, cut up and rearranged.
Sometimes it was great to slice right into the words themselves,
breaking them down into smaller and smaller fragments. Or to tune
through short wave and FM radio stations at night, transcribing
any recognisable phrases or lines… Each text developed according
to its own principles, usually around a specific rhythm or a set
of images, which were then worked on from there. Sources for texts
included overheard or taped conversations, news reports, lines
from old movies, the enthused writings of criminals, occultists
and political theorists… There was an openness, an acceptance of
experimentation, in the way Biting Tongues approached things that
allowed you to try out new procedures, new ideas… Cage was intrigued
by what we were getting up to, asking for tapes and things.

GM: I was given a brief: all
noise is good - fill in all the gaps. It's the New Wave: we've
got spiky haircuts and probably look like Ultravox. For each show
we did during that first year (1979/80) we wrote a new, entirely
different set. Preparations for this consisted of, in this order:
1. Make the new Xerox poster and give each show a name ('Dark Room Skin Transfers',
'The Summer Sounds of…'etc)
2. Make some new slides and super-8 film,
3. Make a tape of random stuff to be played throughout the music (a solemn
ritual of dark rooms and the tartan shortbread mixing desk)
4. Work out some music, throw in some tricky bits.
5. Work out the text
6. Do the choreography…

KH: Right from the start Biting
Tongues was always hard work. A rough assemblage of different talents
and personalities, fragments of other groups, conflicting interests
and absurd gestures, it was naïve, furiously committed and
conceptually nightmarish all at the same time. The guiding spirit
behind those early shows was: 'Never do what's easy: never make
it look difficult.' There would be engraving tools and typewriters
set up on stage, sheet metal, animal bones and plastic ray guns
scattered everywhere: anything that made a noise and might look
good. One performance actually began with a tape loop of the audience
heckling us at the end of the previous show. Energy levels and
commitment for each performance were insanely high. At one event
I read aloud passages from an old handbook on the psychology of
advertising then tore out the pages, ripping larger and larger
fistfuls of paper from the binding and throwing them into the audience.
I remember watching smoke pouring out of the PA system, Graham,
Howard and I all hammering in unison on discarded oil cans… We
never played encores because we'd have used everything up by the
end of each show. It always had to be new. It always had to be
different from what we'd done before. Even in the recording studio.

<#>

The first album Don't Heal
was recorded in two short sessions, played straight through without
a break between tracks. Random tapes were left running throughout
both sessions, their accidental intrusions incorporated into the
final mix. The 'Dark Room Skin Transfers' took place at Drone Studios
in Chorlton in August 1980 and suffers from a very dry sound, thanks
to a 1970s studio vogue for dead rooms. The walls were completely
clad in denim. It was recorded and mixed in a single afternoon,
with very few overdubs. 'The White Valise' side from January 1981
benefited from the more upmarket sounds of Pennine studios in Rochdale,
even down to the noises made by the coffee machine in the hall,
which can be heard at the start of Heart Disease. Don't Heal was
the first release on Situation 2 but sales were fairly modest.

Later in 1981 came Live It,
a six-track cassette for New Hormones, home of Ludus, Buzzcocks
and Eric Random, amongst others. This collection was derived from
various sessions at different northwest studios, often performed
live and mixed straight onto the master. It was far more representative
of the band's sound than Don't Heal: raw, energetic and uncompromising.
A couple of leftover tracks, including Iyahbhoone, were used on
Northern Lights, a New Hormones audio-magazine available on cassette
only. Other Biting Tongues recordings from this period remain unheard
and unreleased.

Soon afterwards, Belgian producer
Roland Beelans became involved with the band, producing a radical
reworking of Evening State from Live It as one side of a 12" maxi
single on his label, Antler. The result was very different from
previous Tongues recordings in that it could be broken down into
four or five separate tunes, sounding more like a suite than a
single piece. Roland continued working on the Tongues' major album,
Libreville, recorded again in two extended sessions between August
and December 1982 at Bootleg Studio. The band was now performing
frequently around Manchester and London, meaning that the material
on Libreville was more focused and less reliant on chance occurrence.
Aaircare proved a particular favourite with live audiences. Although
recorded for New Hormones as ORG 26, the album was eventually released
on Paragon after NH ran out of money.

Meanwhile Tongues activity
grew increasingly diverse. By the time Libreville appeared in 1983,
the band were putting out a newsletter, Weatherman, which supplied
updates on Feverhouse, a feature film project that Howard and Ken
had managed to secure funding for in early 1983. Written by Ken
and featuring an onscreen performance by Graham among others, filming
for Feverhouse continued throughout that year, thanks to additional
funding from an altruistic Tony (now Anthony H.) Wilson. Factory
later released the finished 55 minute film through their Ikon video
arm.

GM: Naturally, the Tongues
set about doing the soundtrack… A conscious effort to keep the
guitar/drums/bass convention out of the proceedings led to a fairly
loop-driven, ambient affair using the AMS digital delay capture
device. The results were very percussion-orientated (sticks and
stones), highlighting the then fashionable limited trumpet playing
technique employed by ACR, Gristle and 23 Skidoo. We were at Bootleg
studios in Stockport once again: a converted sweetshop and sweatshop
where the band had to play knee-deep in the empty skins of unfinished
E.T. dolls.

<#>

The Feverhouse soundtrack
was later released on vinyl as Fact 105. Returning to 1983, the
Tongues continued in a very experimental vein with frequent use
of two drum kits, Colin laying down his bass to sit behind the
second set. The introduction of more prepared tapes and choreographed
vocal texts meant that live shows were growing increasingly ambitious
in scope, as this rare live recording of Everywhere But Here from
April 1983 demonstrates. Unfortunately, none of this material ever
made it into the studio, not lease because the wilful, wayward
Tongues found it hard to locate a sympathetic record label.

KH: Biting Tongues was an
audiovisual laboratory that could be taken onto the stage or into
a recording studio. Music and image, text and sound, action and
gesture were all brought together in such a way that the barriers
separating each element were never completely erased. And it worked…
I learned a lot about writing and delivering texts while working
with the Tongues. It was an invaluable education. However, by 1984
the project had developed a life of its own. Keeping up with all
the new ideas each member was suggesting made it increasingly difficult
for the group to function collectively. For some of the live shows
during this period it was agreed that if you didn't have anything
specific to do onstage during a certain number, you'd just leave
and come back when you were needed. It didn't seem to matter whether
there were five of us out there or only two, the intensity and
energy levels of the performance hardly varied at all. But this
also meant I was free to concentrate on projects outside the Tongues,
such as writing for magazines like ZG, Performance and Impulse,
or collaborating with other artists and composers. Chance favours
the prepared mind.

By 1984 Ken Hollings felt
that it was time to move on. Soon after he left the band, Eddie
Sherwood was lured away by the offer of a job with Simply Red.
Enter Phil Kirby on drums, who provided high octane jazz influenced
workouts which took few prisoners. The Tongues ethic of pushing
boundaries now found a new direction, as the musical content increased
in density, and the delivery became even more frenetic. The band
began collaborating with wizard sound engineer John Hurst, who
had previously worked with A Certain Ratio and Section 25, and
who now became a fifth member of Biting Tongues, processing their
sound from the mixing desk via boxes such as the powertran digital
delay/looper and the harmonizer.

GM: The result was a polyrhythmic
wall of death, often incorporating Colin on second drum kit. We
pushed ourselves far beyond our ability, while John Hurst pushed
the pre-recorded material to new extremes. In this form we completed
our first European tour, then commenced a series of residencies
in Manchester. These regular performances became workshops and
bench tests for new collaborations and ideas. Tom Barnish joined
fulltime as trombonist, fattening the sound further still, and
various voices were pushed through the blender, one being Basil
Clarke from Yargo. All the material at this point was new but little
was recorded. Then Colin departed to pursue his new obsession with
African and Brazilian percussion, going on to form the long running
Manchester institution Inner Sense Percussion Ensemble, again with
Eddie Sherwood.

In 1985 Factory gave Feverhouse
a belated commercial release on album and video, which led to the
band joining the label for some long overdue new recordings. Mark
Derbey took over on bass, and in May the band went into Square
One studios in Bury to record the thunderous Trouble Hand ep. Side
two was recorded at Out of the Blue studios in Ancoats, where the
band also had a rehearsal space. Factory spent serious money on
Trouble Hand, not least on the artwork, and although the single
sold modestly, the label became the first to stick by the band
beyond one lone release. In 1986 Yargo bass player Patrick Steer
took over from Mark Derbey, and the band recorded an excellent
second ep for Factory, Compressor. Sadly the band never cut a full
album during this fertile Factory period, although a 50 minute
video titled Wall of Surf was released by Ikon. However, in 1987
the band suffered a hard knock after the rhythm section (Phil Kirby
and Paddy Steer) left to concentrate on Yargo full time, after
that band signed a lucrative deal with London Records.

Graham Massey, Howard Walmsley
and Tom Barnish carried on, with Massey steering the band in a
more overtly midi/electronic direction after completing a recording
course at Spirit Studios. Live, various brass players and percussionists
were added as the band explored far-flung sonic landscapes and
textures - Suicide meets Fela via pre-cool Bollywood. In the studio,
however, the music continued to evolve in a different direction.
Although the band had always utilised found and treated sounds
as an integral component of their music, the possibilities afforded
by sampling and software brought about a marked shift in emphasis.
At the same time Massey formed 808 State with Martin Price, Darren
Partington, Andy Barker and A Guy Called Gerald, and in November
1988 gamely began work on two albums: Recharge for Biting Tongues,
and Quadrastate for 808. Where 808 State are concerned the rest
is (chart) history, although for the Tongues the outcome was less
happy. Although new label Cut Deep survived long enough to release
the club-friendly single Love Out early in 1989, featuring guest
vocalist Denise Johnstone, and the remodelled band began to pick
up some excellent press, the label folded before Recharge reached
the stores.

GM: A few test pressings
of Recharge have circulated for years as the holy grail for fans
of early 808, due to the fact it was recorded in the same sessions
as Quadrastate. If it wasn't for the fact of Howard leaving his
soprano sax in the studio overnight, Pacific State might have been
another story…

Fast forward fourteen years,
and events have turned full circle. Not only is the Biting Tongues
back catalogue remastered for CD release, Recharge included, but
the original line-up of Massey, Hollings, Walmsley, Seddon and
Sherwood are reunited for a one-off show at the ICA in London,
on 29 May 2003. Whoever said Biting Tongues don't heal?